fix up a board today

Ronnie Beck

I'm fixing a up board for a friend and am taking pics to show him how to do it again himself, as he's fairly accident prone . Thought I'd stick it up here too.

It's a Mactavish longboard and is polyester resin(poly) over a polyurethane blank (PU). It's easy enough to tell which it is which by putting a big hole in it and looking at the foam . With experience you may be able to pick out the type of foam by looking through the resin in a strong light. The finished resin also feels a bit different, a bit more glassy than the epoxy does.

PU is like a high density foam, a bit like white expanding foam. Lots of tiny bubbles.


Looking through the poly resin



The more common epoxy board is made using epoxy resin over an expanded polystyrene (EPS). Looks like regular Styrofoam. Lots of tiny balls


You must only use polyester resin to fix a polyester board and epoxy to fix an epoxy board. Poly/PU boards are traditionally known as fibreglass boards however epoxy boards are also made using the same fibeglass cloth but not called fibreglass boards. http://www.islesurfboards.com/epoxy-surfboards-buyers-guide.aspx So I had to get a polyester resin kit for this 'fibreglass' mactavish as all mine are epoxy boards.

The fibreglass cloth used in nearly all surfboards



I picked up this solarez poly kit for 30 quid in suset watersports in sligo. The guy there was sound and gave me the spiel on how to use it. Basically the white tube is a foam 'microballoon' filler to replace busted/rotten foam. The yellow tube is suncure only resin with a small amount of short glass fibres in it. The black bottle is dual cure resin and can be cured using sunlight or indoors/ at night using the catalyst provided. It doesn't contain glass and is your final coat or hot coat.

Comes with FA sandpaper so you'll need to pop into a local hardware shop for some. Also only comes with one or two lollipop sticks and no gloves either.

First thing I do with a damaged board is to take a sharp blade and cut away all the damaged foam and resin/cloth and leave it to dry. I picked up this board with a fractured nose and a large kneecap ding on the deck near the rail. Everything was still there. Here is was I judged as good enough to stay.



When I started fixing boards I used to remove the bare minimum of the damaged glass and foam only to have it break again directly beside the old fix. Be careful and gentle with the knife but if anything looks damaged cut it out. With the knee ding I had to remove a large section of the surface of the board as the foam beneath had been compressed and the glass returned to it's original position leaving a 2-3 mm gap, that would have caused problems down the road if I had of just done a quick fix on it.

This is it cleared out and filled in with some of the foam filler. The fillers basically just resin with some lightweight filler in it. I would normally glue in a piece of actual foam but I don't have any donar PU foam and wasn't sure what else to use so went with this. Don't put the foam on to thick as it won't cure through. Use a few layers instead, sanding in between.




More to follow...

MACtic

wow great post and very interesting stuff! can't wait for more.

Ronnie Beck

Once the board is cleaned up and dried out, the next thing is to scrape of any wax in the area and wipe off any of the residues with a rag and white spirits.



Start filling it in. Similar action to putting toothpaste on a brush. Again don't put the filler on too thick. The light can't pass through it like the clear resin. Remember to sand and clean in between each layer. I use 60 grade wet/dry paper to roughen all surfaces.











At his point I would have likes to have shaped the foam filler a bit better but ran out of it. It came up a bit thin as it is so I didn't want to take any away. Probably would have sanded it down the lumps a bit and spread a thin layer over the lot of it had I more.




Use a thin film of the yellow fibrefill tube to glue the glass cloth to the foam. This will help hold it in place and help stop air from being trapped under the cloth.



Press the cloth onto the glue. You can cut it to size or leave a large overlap that you can sands off afterwards. Up to yourself. Just make sure the cloth touches all the edges. At this point you don't want to get any resin onto the surface of the board. Keep it all in the ding or you'll be sanding. Set the board up at the best angle to prevent overspill. In the pic below the board is on it's side with the tail on the ground and the nose up on a coffee table get the right angle to do all of this repair. Both the filler and fibrefill are like a gel from the tube and don't run much. The same can't be said for the laminating resin. It's very runny, similar to veg oil. Have a cloth at the ready to wipe off any runs.


I repeated this so it had two layers of cloth and gave it the first quick sand to shape it up a bit.




At this point I felt the running out of filler coming back to haunt me. I hoped I'd get away with it but it was just short of flush with the original surface. I should now be simply taking a paint brush and painting on a thin layer of laminating resin. Instead I poured on the laminating resin to make up the difference and sanded that back.




It's back on the water now and is near perfect but I'll give it another sand, a coat with the paint brush, then out with the fine sandpapers to finish it.

Ronnie Beck

On the deck it was the same as above really, including the not having enough filler bit. You can see below that it needed a bit more. It should be flush with the bottom of the original glass but try not to run any up onto it. I did in one or two spots as you can see in the pic and had to sand it off.




The surface of this board had a paint on it(from being previously snapped) which had to be sanded off. Sand about 15mm around the edge of a repair this size. You can also see where I cut the cloth a biit short. Had to cut a new piece.



After one layer of glass the concave in the filler was obvoius.



After the second layer of glass and a bit of a pour of laminating resin it was grand. Sanded it back and it's in the same situation as the nose now just needing as last coat of resin. If you set up masking tape just outside the sanded area you can spread the resin towards and the excess up onto it.

The repair to this point took two half days work most of which is just waiting for each layer to cure. The resins all cure in overcast weather but it takes about a half an hour. Even in full sun it takes about 5 minutes so your not really getting down to the 3 minute cure times on the packaging. Try and work arond the middle of the day. I started at lunch time on both days and things got very slow after four o'clock. Sun-cure is a bit of a trade off. It was great not having to mix chemicals all the time but a pain waiting for it to dry. Doing this nose job with epoxy filler wound have meant mixing up alot of batches, which is a bit messy, and your wasting any surplus you mix up.


Don't use any power tools. If you are carefull not to use to much you shouldn't need to do much sanding but, if you do, go at it by hand using high quality wet/dry sandpaper and not some crap from woodies. 60 grade will eat through hard resin quick enough. Flick the paper with you finger to remove the build up in the grit. Power tools give you no feel and no view for what you are doing and can do alot more harm than good.

Ronnie Beck

After the two layers of glass it's onto the laminating coat. Dont be too skimpy on the resin. Near a full measuring tub to do both patches. Use the masking tape to catch the mess. I done this with the board on it's side hiding the tub behind it from the sun as I was doing it.





Strip away the tape after about half an hour. Don't let the tape get wet. Your left with this.




Get sanding. Start with the 80 and stay awaay from the board itself, just sand the patch. With the 150 you can start to blend in the edges a bit. Remember if you hit the original laminate with a rough paper it will gouge the surface so wait until the finer stuff before going near it.



Think I used a 260 grit to fully blend it in and then a wet sand with 400 grit to finish and smooth the whole lot. This gives more or less a gloss finish but you could keep going up to 800 grit if you wanted.


Turned out nice enough. Never done a repair this big before never mind two at once. Doing it again and with more time I would definitely sourced a bit of foam for the nose and then used all filler on the deck.

Great video here.

oldguysrip

I know your trying to help with this post but the repair doesn't look right. The end repairs on this are not fair and the lines of the board are messed up. The board has been devalued by this repair by the tune of about €100 add to that the cost of the kit, the man hours, and mess, not to mention the risk of pneumonia from the toxic dust. The end result is that it probably cost money to do it yourself. I imagine a ding repairer would charge about €50 in total for the repairs.

spaceHopper

Ba hum bug, you have to start somewhere and learn how to do it, you can't be an instant expert it takes practice, I do most of my own reparis.

saltrock2007

Nice post and very informative. I've been repairing dings for a good few people in the Dublin region so have seen a few, and mostly what you say is right. The only thing you might add is that for the filler part, you'll want a 60/40 of cabosil (fiberglass powder) and resin. When it's mixed in, it'll be as thick as porridge and won't slide off the ding hole. You also want to fill the hole so that the filler raises above the line of the original laminate. That way you can sand down the entire area flush.
The rest is fine, nice work.

VNP

Tricky process in that video dont think i ll bother chancing it myself anymore, most pro repairs seem to be a bargain compared to spending 10 hours sanding in the living room watching tv breathing in that crap and having crusty fingers

rodento

Depends on how much the board is worth and how often you ding it

My rule of thumb is it's a high end board I get glide to fix it but if it's a battered oul board I'll do it myself if it's a minor ding